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RENTON, Wash. - Russell Wilson is a test study in the nature vs. nurture argument. And nurture is winning. After being selected in the third round of the 2012 National Football League draft, Wilson told Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll, “I can be the starting quarterback on this team.”

Never mind that the Seahawks had signed former Green Bay Packers backup Matt Flynn to a three-year, $26-million contract ($10 million guaranteed) to be their starter.

Such self-belief came naturally to Wilson, even though he did not measure up to the standard of what an NFL quarterback should be. The fact that he had superior physical abilities, good enough to be drafted by a Major League Baseball team, was no longer enough for most NFL teams, because Wilson was only five-foot-10 and five-eighths inches tall.

Yet, for as long as he can remember, Wilson has been a motivated individual, surrounded by a family of high achievers who imbued him with a sense that his destiny is his own.

“I’ve been a business person ever since I was three years old,” explained Wilson, in a recent interview with The Vancouver Sun. “I run a passing academy all over the country. We’re going international for the first time. We’re going to Vancouver, Canada (actually, Ambleside Park, in West Vancouver). There are a lot of Seahawks fans up there, so it should be exciting.”

The Russell Wilson Passing Academy is part of a two-day, 12 Man Tour by the National Football League team (July 4-5) to connect with its fan base in southwestern British Columbia, an acknowledgment that greater Vancouver is an important part of the Seahawks’ marketing sweep.

Wilson’s camp, one of eight run by the Seahawks quarterback with his lifelong friend and business associate Scott Pickett, will feature Seahawk receivers Jermaine Kearse and Bryan Walters, both of whom grew up in the Seattle area. Linebackers K.J. Wright and Bruce Irvin are also involved in other initiatives by the ’Hawks on the 12 Man Tour.

When Wilson was interviewed at this year’s Super Bowl, he gushed about the rival Denver Broncos quarterback — Peyton Manning — and how he’d been following his example ever since attending one of Manning’s passing camps.

“There’s thousands of kids there,” Wilson said, “and I was actually in his group — I think 12 or 15 other guys — and just how much care he showed for the kids at the time and how much detail he always talked about and how much of a perfectionist he was, and I try to use that in my game.”

Wilson admitted he concocted the idea of his own camp, in collaboration with Pickett, during an 11th grade chemistry class at Collegiate School — a prep school in Richmond, Va., that the pair attended from kindergarten through high school graduation. Wilson was class president in the 12th grade.

“He (Pickett) was sitting next to me and I told him, ‘It would be a great idea,’ ” Wilson explained. “Scott and I partnered on it. We went for it.”

Interestingly, when queried about the genesis of the Russell Wilson Passing Academy last week during the Seahawks mini-camp, the quarterback didn’t reference his experience with Manning.

“To be honest with you, I didn’t go to too many camps growing up,” Wilson said. “The reason I say that is, I was always playing football, basketball and baseball. I never really had time off. I’d play 100-something baseball games in the summer time. I learned about the fundamentals of the game. My mom, my dad, my brother taught me the fundamentals of how to respect others and do all those things. If I can just change one kid’s life at my camp, it can make all the difference in the world. One kid can be the next LeBron James or Martin Luther King or whomever.”

If Wilson needed role models in his own life, he didn’t have to look far.

His grandfather, Harrison B. Wilson Jr., was a multiple-sport athlete who served as president at Norfolk State, a liberal arts, historically black university, for 22 years.

His dad, Harrison Wilson III, played two sports at Dartmouth, went to law school at the University of Virginia and was nicknamed The Professor by the San Diego Chargers when he tried out for the NFL team.

When Wilson’s dad died from complications of diabetes, his uncle, Benjamin Wilson, became more important in his sprawling familial support system. Ben Wilson, who attended Harvard Law School after Dartmouth, is a prominent environmental lawyer, managing principal of Beveridge & Diamond in Washington, D.C.

“This is no ghetto kid,” explained Art Thiel, a respected Seattle sportswriter commissioned to do a book, Standing Tall, on the third youngest quarterback to win the Super Bowl. “He comes from a very bright family … very polished and sophisticated public figures. It was easy for Russell to pick up role models because he’s been around successful people all his life.”

It was because of such guidance that Wilson arrived in Seattle with a firm sense of self. He had driven himself so hard to get there that superior preparation, superior instincts and athletic ability blended together to make him the first quarterback in the Super Bowl era to win 28 games in his first two seasons.

Having achieved so much so very quickly, he is in the pleasantly awkward position of needing to achieve another superlative season in 2014. Anything less than another Super Bowl may be considered slightly disappointing.

Still only 25, his next goal is an even loftier one — to chase the white whale of perfection.

“Why can’t I be the best quarterback to ever play the game one day?” Wilson told ESPN Dallas. “I’m not right now. I’ve got a long way to go. But, one day, you know?”

That attitude is no surprise to Pickett, who became aware of qualities in Wilson, beyond which coaches can help develop, when they were six years old. They’d run outside from school, with Russell throwing and Scott catching. Today, they’re pitching American Family Insurance, Nike, Alaska Airlines and Microsoft, among a growing list of commercial and endorsement deals that play off Wilson’s wholesomeness, character and credibility.

“He’s just someone who has the same morals and values that I had,” Pickett said, in explaining their friendship. “Russell is very goal-driven. He works hard in all things. He’s supportive of his friends. He has your back. And he’s an honest guy, the kind of ideal human being you’d want in your corner all the time.”

What the Pulitzer Prize winning commentator George Will noted of the study of law — “that it sharpens the mind by narrowing it” — is often true of anyone fixated on excellence, including athletes. It’s at the root of Wilson’s soaring trajectory as a football player.

He may remain an entrancing spectacle for many years yet, but there is a sense that the NFL won’t necessarily be the apogee of his life.

“Priority No. 1 is quarterbacking the Seahawks,” Pickett said. “Five or 10 years from now, using the right resources and asking the right questions, who knows how great he’ll be? Beyond that? Absolutely, he could be a politician.

“He has a communications degree (it took him just three years to get it at North Carolina State), and he has great interaction with people. He’s a nice human being, truthful and honest. People want to put themselves around people like that.”

In a media scrum or public interview — the Seahawks rarely allow one-on-one access to Wilson — he can be as difficult to pin down as he is elusive on the football field.

Wilson tends to speak in homilies, platitudes and bromides — in some respects, like a politician-in-training.

“I call him the ‘Human Hallmark Card,’ ” Thiel said. “The big challenge here is for everybody to ask him the same question six different ways to see if we can get him to be more spontaneous … more nuanced … less clichéd. He’s learned a very clever trick. If you have some bedrock principles, you can bring every answer back to that. That keeps an athlete, a politician or a public figure from deviating from the script too much and avoiding the controversial question. But it will be a complete sentence. For most of us (sportswriters and broadcasters), when we get a complete sentence from somebody, we just say, “Fine.’ ”

Tedious as his responses can be, Wilson is, after all, 25 (as Thiel is the first to acknowledge) and still feeling his way through the celebrity game. Preternaturally controlled on the gridiron, it reckons that Wilson should be absolutely fastidious with his words in front of a microphone.

And what will his message be to 400 rapt youngsters in West Vancouver, on the first international camp day of the Russell Wilson Passing Academy?

“The biggest thing, for me, is trying to make an impact on somebody’s life,” Wilson explained. “I’ll try and share the moment, try and share the idea of winning a Super Bowl and how cool it is to play in a big game like that. I’ll talk about the fundamentals of football, but we’ll also talk about how to build strong character and set yourself up for the future. It’s going to be a great experience.”

As Argument No. 1 against the NFL’s black and white metrics, Wilson might give a kid pause to think, with that same kind of uncommon dedication, anything is possible.

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